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GERMANY: July 3, 2007
BERLIN - Germany will only meet ambitious greenhouse gas-reduction targets with a major increase in renewable energy usage, a lobby group said on Monday ahead of a government meeting on energy issues on Tuesday.
Rejecting criticism from utilities and industry leaders that the government is too focused on climate protection, the renewable energy association (BEE) said Germany could lift the renewables power share from 12 percent to 35 percent by 2020.
"The only way Germany will meet the CO2 goals it set with the European Union is with a massive expansion of renewables," said BEE managing director Milan Nitschke at a news conference.
"Anything short of that will put the targets out of reach," he added. Renewable sources include solar, wind and hydro power.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government wants carbon dioxide emissions cut by 30 percent by 2020 compared to 1990. Industry and power producers cause most of Germany's greenhouse gases.
Merkel made the environment a focus of Germany's six-month long EU presidency and led an EU effort to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent by 2020.
Industry and energy users will be squeezed by a scheduled phase out of nuclear energy by the early 2020s. The 17 plants now produce about a quarter of Germany's power.
Germany, the world's sixth largest emitter of CO2, is building or planning more than 20 coal-fired plants to close the gap. But environmental groups have said adding coal-fired plants to replace nuclear plants would jeopardise the CO2 goals.
German power firms, who have resisted further reductions in CO2 limits, are frustrated that the Tuesday meeting at Merkel's chancellery on energy issues is likely to avoid what they see as a key issue -- the future of nuclear power.
The utilities say they need longer nuclear operations to win time to meet the ambitious environmental goals and are fed up with the prospect of a third such high level meeting taking place without an open discussion of the nuclear issue.
The results of the gathering will form the basis for a national energy plan in the autumn, which utilities are concerned will be unrealistic. (Additional reporting by Markus Wacket)
Story by Erik Kirschbaum
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
